Demolition Woman, Can I Be Your Man?
by lurknomoar
Summary: Deanna Winchester grows up wearing second-hand boys' clothes and a crew cut. It has little to do with self-expression, more with practicality and even more with a father who has no idea how to raise a daughter. Maybe it was just about having less baggage to worry about on the road, maybe it was about how heartbreakingly similar she looked to her mother.


Deanna Winchester is four when her mother dies, and she runs out of the burning building with her brother in her arms. From that moment on she knows that keeping her brother safe is the only thing that matters.

Deanna Winchester is the name on her driver's licence (not strictly true, as he has several of those, between twenty and thirty at any given time). She was called Dee for as long as she remembers – although John once told her that both her parents called her Deanna, her full name, until Sam started talking, and got stuck at the first syllable.

Deanna Winchester grows up wearing second-hand boys' clothes and a crew cut. It has little to do with self-expression, more with practicality and even more with a father who has no idea how to raise a daughter. When she turned eleven, her father gave her a twenty and gruffly told her to buy feminine supplies if she needed them, remembering it would be funny if it wasn't for the gaping absence of her mother. She doesn't remember if she was ever given the talk, but if it happened it certainly included less "wear a condom" and more "check if they are human". Deanna Winchester grew up a soldier – she didn't exactly look down on other girls, girls who wore pink and talked about shoes – but she knew that they were civilians. But then again, so were the boys, soft and weak despite all of their tough talk and rough attitude. Her father strongly discouraged anything girly, even more so than when Sam did it, even though he was actually a boy. Maybe it was just about having less baggage to worry about on the road, maybe it was about how, in some moments, when the morning light hit her eyes at the right angle, Deanna looked heartbreakingly similar to her mother. Deanna Winchester never wore jewellery apart from the amulet she got from Sam one Christmas. She wore jeans and plaid, and from the reactions of boys (and some girls) around her, she knew she was nevertheless hot stuff. She suspected that if she was a boy, John would want him to sleep with any and every girl worth sleeping with, and would have taken her to a brothel at age fourteen.

As it is, Deanna Winchester lost her virginity at age sixteen. It was after her first successful hunt, powder burns on her fingers, the overly large plaid shirt she wore soaked in the blood of the motherfucker she ganked, adrenaline thrumming through her bloodstream that she sneaked out of the hotel room (Sammy was away at Bobby's place, nothing to worry about.) She walked into the first cheap-looking bar in her tank top (she suspected the blood spatter would hurt her chances, not knowing that her fierce glow in the aftermath of a kill was irresistible with or without blood.) She surveyed the bar, spotted a young-ish guy, quite likely a truck driver, drinking alone – he was tall, his shoulders were nice, his beard a drawback but never mind. She walked over to him, said "hey". Ten minutes later she was riding him into the creaking bed in his hotel room. Afterward she immediately started throwing her clothes back on, feeling oddly triumphant. Her first kill and her first fuck in a day was absolutely worth missing prom for. The guy was not so elated when he saw the blood – "Jesus Christ, how old are you" he asked with a note of panic in his voice. She wanted to say sixteen, but looking at that frightened, confused, and so utterly civilian face she felt decades older than him, so she threw a "twenty-two" over her shoulder as she walked out. When she arrived back to their own motel room at four in the morning, John had a long look at her, and seemed to be absolutely livid and genuinely proud at the same moment, which resulted in him saying absolutely nothing.

Deanna Winchester doesn't allow herself any weakness, she knows that a few tears will mark her as irretrievably useless, her default approach towards the world is a preemptive "don't fuck with me". She repairs cars, covered in engine grease to the elbow, she ganks monsters and only washes the blood out of her hair when she has to. She doesn't have the time to prettify herself, to powder or to moisturise, to pick out her outfits, to care about things like that – and it would stop her looking like a threat, it would make the Colt she carries look like a joke. She likes getting laid, but she figures she doesn't need to put in any effort into it. Skirts and dresses inhibit movement too much, and she never feels natural in them, they are all right as costumes for when Sammy and her have to look all respectable, but not when she is being herself, being a hunter. (She never thinks there is a difference between being herself and being a hunter.) All the concession to femininity she allows herself is a single stick of blood-red lipstick. It's enough to walk into a bar, get someone to offer to buy her a drink then suggest they skip the drink and go fuck instead. Of course, sometimes guys are assholes, they make the mistake of threatening, coercing or cornering her, on one occasion a guy tried to drug her beer, she has to resist the urge to roll her eyes at how ridiculously amateurish he is. She is always more annoyed than intimidated, and usually if someone pulls a knife on her she can pull a bigger one – still, she remembers that when she was seventeen, eighteen, when John wasn't around and funds were low, there were days when she would do anything for a few dollars, as long as Sammy didn't find out. Some of it she would rather not remember. Lately she got into the habit of going along with it until it was only the two of them, knocking the motherfuckers out and stealing their wallets. She normally hated taking anything from civilians – but these guys were the ones who clearly deserved worse than some missing money, credit cards and personal identification.

Deanna Winchester went to hell and came back. When her body was healed, her cuts and scrapes were gone, her hair was grown back to its maximum length and she was physically a virgin again. She took got rid of this second virginity with as little ceremony as she got rid of the first, and afterwards she hacked off her unfamiliarly long hair in front of the mirror in a motel bathroom, feeling the cold of her serrated knife at the nape of her neck. The only thing she couldn't get rid of was the angel's handprint on her shoulder.

Deanna Winchester doesn't really remember her mother, but sometimes she really wished she would, especially since she knows that Mary was a hunter too. She has very vague memories and it is difficult to reconcile the sweet, golden-haired woman to the ruthless hunter she knows she must have been. Sometimes she thinks wistfully of being four again, when she could wear pink bows in her hair and still take the playground bully out with a single kick.


End file.
